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It was a few weeks off (almost two months!) from doing these, as I got out of the habit what with getting Ninja Outbreak ready for its Steam release (available now!). But now the Sunday Updates are back! And on Sunday!

I’ve put Famed Explorer of the Robot World on the backburner for the moment, and I’ve been focusing on Cold Vengeance for the past couple weeks. My current hope is to have some sort of rough but mostly content-complete build done by the end of next month. In the mean time, here are some screenshots of some of what I’ve been working on:

Here’s an overview shot of a section of the Canadian Snowfields level.

I’ve also been going through and adding a bit more detail to the locations in the city level. Here’s a Diner that you’ll fight through:

This week has been spent mostly with enemies for Cold Vengeance. I also put together the first full cutscene for the game (The first one I’ve made, not the first one to appear in the game). The cutscene is related to one of the enemies, as it introduces the fearsome Barbarian Queen, the boss of the Ruin level.

It contains a Demo-specific level which will not be in the final game.

But the Demo isn’t all I’ve done this week. For Cold Vengeance, I’ve been doing a fair amount of modeling and animation. Here are some examples of what I’ve been working on:

As you can see, Jon Dagger now has a face (drawn courtesy of Ben)

In addition to all that, just today I added a second type of Ninja.

Burrowing Ninja are a hallmark of the kind of schlocky ninja movies I love such as Ninja: The Final Duel and Duel to the Death. I’ve wanted to put them into a game for quite some time, but I never end up doing it. They were in the design notes for the original Cold Vengeance flash game, as well as Venusian Vengeance and Ninja Outbreak. I’m glad I’m finally getting them into a game.

Meanwhile, I’ve been continuing to work on Famed Explorer of the Robot World. I’ve been polishing various things, such as making enemy projectiles look nicer. I’ve also been doing some more level design, as well as playing around with making levels less boxy. All in all, the game is starting to hit that point where it comes together and feels like an actual game.

This week was again spent mostly with Cold Vengeance. I’m working on putting together a playable demo, and I wanted to make a new level specifically for that rather than just using one of the levels in the game.

I also worked on the Motorcycle level, which included modeling the motorcycle, animating the player model and the motorcycle model together, and working on the feel of driving the motorcycle.

Did some more tweaking and level design for Famed Explorer. Once I’ve got the demo for Cold Vengeance done (which will probably be tomorrow), I’m going to shift focus towards getting some level design done in Famed Explorer, so look forward to seeing more of that next week.

Remembered in the fading minutes of Sunday that I still hadn’t written the update for this week. And so, here it is. This week, the main thing I worked on was a Canyon level for Cold Vengeance. The main defining feature of this level is that running through the center is a pit with a raging river at the bottom. So the action takes place on ledges and arches crisscrossing the canyon. Naturally, this lends itself to verticality, with some parts of the level having multiple tiers of ledges.

I also got my Cutscene Scripting code working in Cold Vengeance.

Meanwhile, for Famed Explorer, I’ve mostly been working on tweaking and polishing what I have so far before making another batch of levels. I changed the way that shooting works so that, in addition to being able to lock on to enemies, you can also hold down the fire button to strafe while you shoot:

Once again, a lot of the work I did for Cold Vengeance I want to keep under my hat this week. However, I will talk a bit about NPCs.

In a few areas of the game, there will be safe zones containing NPCs. These NPCs may give you items, information, or just bring a bit of life to a world overrun by death.

Here’s some residents of a village of survivors in the Ruins:

Meanwhile, in Famed Explorer of the Robot World, I’ve been mainly working on new enemy types. I’ve gotten into a pretty good flow with that game, and hope to have some sort of build done by the end of February (but don’t hold me to that).

All in all, it’s been a good month. It’s been nice to get back to working on smaller projects along side a moderately sized project like Cold Vengeance (Unlike the last couple years where I was working on moderately sized projects along side a massive project).

I’ve been working on enemy designs and level layouts. It’s been something of an interesting divergence from my normal level-design workflow where I usually start with enemies/obstacles and then build levels around them. In this case, there’s enough to work off of just designing level geometry that is interesting to navigate. Then, in parallel, I’ve been designing enemies that can take advantage of different types of geometry that show up in the levels (enemies for open areas, enemies for attacking over gaps, enemies for ramps, enemies for long, thin pathways, ect…). I’m sure, though, that as I create more enemies, it will begin to switch and I’ll start designing levels with specific enemies in mind.

Meanwhile, I have been continuing to work both on Cold Vengeance and on the Prototype which I’m currently planning on calling Famed Explorer of the Robot World (Those of you who regularly follow my games [all three of you] might know what one of those words entails). I sketched out ideas for a bunch of enemies and have started adding them into the game to give me material to work with while making levels. More on this next week.

Aside from the trailer, the main thing I’ve been doing with Cold Vengeance is continuing to work on the ruins, particularly the multi-tiered areas. Here’s a overview image of one of the areas after the jump (note, contains mild gameplay spoilers):